


There's no going home (with a name like mine)

by themistyeyeofthemountain



Series: Stop all the clocks [4]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, First War with Voldemort, Gen, Lowkey PTSD, M/M, Marauders, Marauders' Era, Post-First War with Voldemort, Well not really but look their happiness is a work in progress okay
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-23
Updated: 2016-08-23
Packaged: 2018-08-10 14:42:16
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,104
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7849099
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/themistyeyeofthemountain/pseuds/themistyeyeofthemountain
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He did not tell anyone he was coming. He did not even voice the thought aloud, holding the words in his throat so as not to lose them, not really believing he was really doing this until he Apparated in the small lonely path between the hills, barely enough of a road to let a car pass. The door is closed, but he realises he had been hoping it would be open, somehow waiting for him, welcoming him inside. He doesn't know whether he is welcome here or not. He doubts he is even wanted. But he needs to try.</p>
            </blockquote>





	There's no going home (with a name like mine)

**Author's Note:**

> Because I'm physically incapable of writing things in their chronological order, there is a one-shot that comes after Hogwarts Era and after the first war with Voldemort, all of which I do plan on writing someday. So yes, this is part of my Stop all the clocks series, only there's like a four-year gap between its current state and this fic, I'm sorry.  
> This is obviously an AU, and I won't give much details because hey, spoilers, but what you might want to know is that Peter was discovered but not soon enough; Voldemort did kill James and Lily and "die" himself trying to kill Harry. Sirius was sent to Azkaban for a short period of time before the truth was discovered and he was released (and I'm not saying how). So the horrible angst-inducing stuff has actually happened. Shit, I'm a monster.  
> I wrote this in one sitting listening repeatedly to [Ghost Towns by Radical Face](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9MUA9hoDa40) (title from this song); I thus strongly recommend to listen to it while reading. You should also listen to pretty much everything from Radical Face, it's quite brilliant.  
> As always, don't underestimate the value of a kudo and of a comment. I need serious feedback on this.

* * *

 

_"Nous n'aurons plus jamais notre âme de ce soir."_

\- Anna de Noailles

 

The house has not changed much since last time Sirius was there. It is still small and hunched over against the sloping hillside, dwarfed by the two oaks dressed on either side of it. It looks a little more run-down, a little older, a little frailer. Like everything else, Sirius thinks. The sky rolls over the bare top of the hill, open and clean, enormous, engulfing. Sirius looks down, considers jumping over the dry stone wall and thinks better of it. He walks to the low portal and gently pushes it just enough to slip in. The garden has all the features of one having been well-kept for many years by a person now gone forever. Weeds creep between the medicinal herbs and the occasional rosebush, the latter covered with late-bloomers. Some are a deep red or a soft pink; the gardener's apparent favourite are a strange colour, between dusk and dawn, faint orange with touches of yellow and the occasional hint of mauve and pink, the colours unfurling in velvety-looking petals. The rosebushes are the only neat element in a quiet debauchery of wild grasses and untrimmed plants. He slowly walks along the cobbled path. The wind plays with his short, almost feathery hair. Not having untamed locks flying in his eyes feels strange. Naked. He doesn't dwell on it, rather focusing on the far-away rumble of the sea.

He stares at the door for a long moment. No sound comes from within the cottage, although he knows it's inhabited. He checked. The door is closed, of course, there is no reason it would be open. He did not tell anyone he was coming. He did not even voice the thought aloud, holding the words in his throat so as not to lose them, not really believing he was really doing this until he Apparated in the small lonely path between the hills, barely enough of a road to let a car pass. The door is closed, but he realises he had been hoping it would be open, somehow waiting for him, welcoming him inside. He doesn't know whether he is welcome here or not. He doubts he is even wanted. But he needs to try.

He knocks more forcefully than he planned, his anxiousness transmitted to the painted, chipped wood through his closed fist. His nails dig half-crescent moons in his palms. He stopped biting them some time ago; that was a small self-harm, one he could control and stop, one less damage on his body. He forces himself to breathe in the salty wind, imagining how the waves must feel. Strong, moving, calm yet rushing, cyclic. Like the sleeping Earth's breathing. He rolls his shoulders and stuffs his shaking fists in the pockets of his leather jacket. His heart beats wildly, so much he feels his ribs won't be able to withstand the pressure much longer. He can already feel them cracking. When the door finally opens, he thinks, for a painful second, he is going to die on the spot.

He doesn't.

Remus looks old. Tired. There are lines over his mouth, at the corner of his eyes, bruises under the latter, white hairs amongst the brown ones. Sirius drinks him in, the scar over the bridge of his nose, the one on his cheekbone, the other that runs from his jaw to his collarbone and beyond – he knows them all; his palms remember. He drinks in the slump of his shoulders, the amber of his eyes, the wide array of emotions that cross his face when he sees Sirius. Surprise. Disbelief. Pain. Anger. Disbelief, again, followed by hurt, which retreats to his eyes, leaving the rest of his face carefully blank. They stare at each other, frozen, before Remus speaks first, always the brave one.

“Sirius.”

His voice is tired, too, hoarse and husky, like he has only had silence to speak to for so long the stillness has eaten the sound up. Sirius wants to say something, give Remus his name back, anything. He opens his mouth and nothing comes out. Remus watches him for a moment before stepping back and signalling him to come in with a tilt of the head. Sirius enters the house, shakes out of his jacket almost mechanically, suspends it on the coat hanger and follows Remus into the kitchen. The kettle is already on the stove. He stays at the entrance, looking at the other man opening cupboards and getting cups and saucers out.

“- I'm afraid I only have tea-bags left,” Remus says at the milk and sugar he is disposing on a tray. Sirius shrugs, knowing Remus can catch the movement from the corner of his eye. Tea-bags are better than nothing, the motion says. They both know what _nothing_ means.

When the kettle whistles, Remus leads the way back outside into an area protected from the wind by the bulk of the house where stand a small table and two chairs in wrought iron that Sirius still remembers. He carefully deposits the tray on the table and folds himself in one of the chairs, looking at Sirius expectantly until he sits too. From where they are, the growl of the sea is more of a barely-there rumour. The air is quiet. Remus pours two cups, adding the exact measure of milk and sugar to Sirius's before presenting him both cup and saucer. Sirius feels the air squeeze out of his chest at the gesture, feels his heart has been punched out of his ribcage by the simple fact Remus remembers how he takes his tea. He accepts the offered tea with trembling hands, manages to stir it without making the spoon clink on the old porcelain and takes a sip. Remus observes him, gently blowing on the tea he is holding with steady, scar-sewn hands, calm and collected as always. The sun is sinking in the west, slanting light sliding over the bald head of the hill and painting the garden and the walls in brushes of soft gold. As the wind ruffles the oaks' canopy, a beam of light is deviated and strikes Remus's angular visage, his cheekbones, more salient than Sirius remembered, caresses a corner of his eye and his iris, turning it to molten honey, touches the bridge of his nose, outlining the silver scar on it. It is a face Sirius's eyes, lips and palms memorised a long time ago, bumps and plains, scar tissue and unmarred skin. It is a face he printed behind his eyelids without realising it, a face he probably knows better than his own, a face he could recognise old and blind, just by touch. He feels pain bloom in his thorax like a huge bruise called back to life. With Remus's face, Remus's hands, Remus as a whole before him, breathing and speaking and as broken as Sirius is, Sirius suddenly misses him, misses him so much and so sharply he feels his eyes water. With a start, he realises he hasn't spoken a word since he arrived. He clears his throat, opens his mouth to speak, say something, anything, but nothing comes out. He is blank, he that spent hours rehearsing what he would say once he found Remus.

But Remus, because he knows how Sirius takes his tea, because he knew Sirius would remember where the kitchen was, Remus sees this.

“Why did you come?”

An orange oak leaf flutters down from above in a slow, graceful fall, and calmly settles on the iron table. Sirius lets his gaze caress its round lobes, its dry stem and flat surface.

“I miss you.”

Younger, he would never had thought words could hurt so much. He feels them crunch his heart, slice his throat open, sees them punch Remus in the gut, hears his quick intake of breath. Remus squeezes his eyes shut, biting on his lower lip. Suddenly, everything seems sharpened by these three little words, pain relentlessly unfurling, sleepless nights and sleepwalking days relived in an instant, leaving them both worn out, stretched thin by too much hurt and heartache.

“I miss you so much,” he repeats, his voice breaking in the middle of it. He is going to cry, he knows it and, in a way, welcomes it. He feels like he is going to explode under all this grief, all these contained tears. He misses him, _them_ , every day, like a phantom limb, like his heart has been carved out, like someone burnt his home to the ground. He takes a deep breath, slowly lowers his cup of cooled tea on the tray and then curls his hands around each other on his lap. Remus is furiously staring at the garden, lips trembling like he is holding back a cry. Minutes measured in fierce heartthrobs pass in silence.

“You cut your hair,” Remus finally says. Sirius swallows.

“Yes."

"Why?"

"It felt too heavy.”

The words are ill-fitting for what he wants to express, but he expects Remus to understand that, to seize them and carefully snip and clip until they suit the idea, which he does. He nods in assent, sips at his tea, sets the saucer on the tray next to Sirius's and starts outlining a new scar on the back of his left hand with his long fingers.

“You thought I was the traitor.”

There it is. The accusation. The gaping, bleeding wound.

“I did."

"You thought I was selling you all to those we were fighting against."

"I… yes.”

The silence that settles this time is heavy with unsaid words, charges and recriminations, and always this terrible hurt they carry like an illness.

“You loved me, and you thought I was the traitor,” Remus whispers. Sirius looks at him. They are both crying, slowly, silently, both ignoring the tears streaking down their cheeks but staring at the other's.

“Yes,” Sirius chokes. He has been reliving the horror of doubt for months. That is what happens when you don't heal injuries: they add up, each throbbing its silent complaint in tune with the others.

Then again, silence settles over them. Younger, he would never had thought words could hurt so much; but they do, opening gashes and slashes, sucking oxygen from the lungs, grinding bones into dust. Neither of them can say much without it becoming _too_ much. Sirius feels like he is on the shore of a limitless ocean he poured himself and that he now needs to empty. It's too much; it's not enough.

Maybe they can't be fixed.

“I'm so tired,” Remus murmurs. His fists are balled up so tight his knuckles are white. “Before the war, I was already so tired with what my life was, so worn out by all the obstacles I had to overcome all the time, but now… Now, I'm just.” He shakes his head, eyes closed. “I can't.”

“I know,” Sirius whispers back.

And that's it, isn't it. They feel old, they feel tired, they feel like they can't do it any more.

They're twenty-two.

“I feel. Broken,” Sirius stammers. Remus opens his eyes and looks at him, really _looks_ at him. “Shattered. Like I was smashed in a million pieces that can't be glued back together.”

The wind picks up, carrying the roar of the ocean with a renewed force, fallen leaves drifting up in the air where the house doesn't stop the current.

“I'm sorry," Sirius says.

"It doesn't really change anything, does it."

"No, but I want you to know. I want… I need to say it."

"You just did."

"I'm sorry,” he repeats. An empty apology. It feels awfully familiar. But Remus gulps and nods in acknowledgement. They watch the wind carry dry leaves and twigs over the low stone wall and beyond. Sirius shivers. Without his jacket, his shirt is the only barrier between his skin and the late summer evening.

“It's the end of summer,” he comments uselessly. Remus shakes his head, the hint of a fond smile playing at the corner of his lips.

“Up here, it's rather the beginning of autumn. And autumn is quite a beautiful season,” he adds after a pause. The ghost of a smile is still there, quivering on his mouth and in his eyes, where it somehow manages not to be drowned by the pond of sorrow resting there. Sirius tentatively puts his right hand on the table, palm turned upwards. Remus stares at it for a long moment before covering it with his own, making Sirius's heart stutter.

“My hands are cold,” Remus breathes.

“They always are,” he answers.

 

 

* * *

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you all for reading. Don't forget feedback :P  
> (If you want to know, I've always situated Remus's childhood home in Northumberland. I have no idea why, I've never even been there, I know what it looks like because I googled it, I'm sorry. It doesn't really matter, just explains the sea and the "up here" comment.)


End file.
